I am a big fan of Chase Jarvis’ blog for a number of reasons, the first being that I find his posts very informative, and secondly inspirational – hence this post. After reading about his totally awesome holiday mailer, I decided to share my own experience’s with my own holiday mailer.
Just so we’re clear right from the beginning, we’re not really comparing apples-to-apples here, but you have to start somewhere right?
This year I decided that I would create two different holiday cards and send them out to folks who were members of my “fan” page on Facebook. All it took to get on the list was simply to become a “fan” and send me your mailing address, response was lighter than I had hoped, but I am still growing my base. Since photography (and my photoblog) are just a hobby for me, I was on a tight budget and decided to use my favourite online printer – MOO. For approximately $50CDN I received 50 cards (25 of each image) with a greeting printed inside, a special URL printed on the back, and recycled envelopes (Green is in). As usual I was really happy with the finished product and was excited to send out my very 1st mailer. Here’s a couple of things I learned during this process,
Have a Goal
I’ve talked about how important it is to always have a goal in mind when you’re doing anything, and I’ll admit that I broke this rule this go-around. It was the first time I decided to create my own mailer (although I have another project in mind) and I got ahead of myself just a bit. My goal for my photoblog has always been to sell prints, and I didn’t work that goal into my mailer at all – by this I mean offering specials, etc. to everyone who received a card.
Triple-check everything
I’ve also talked about being able to track things on your photoblog, and with this in mind I created a special URL that was printed only on the cards. Here’s the problem, I created and tested it multiple times on my computer, but I quickly heard back from several people that the URL didn’t work. Oops! The ideas was to have people come to a special URL on the photoblog, register, and then they would receive an extra little gift. I figured I could track the percentage of people who visited and then the percentage of those who registered. Kinda hard to do, when the page isn’t working…
Conclusion
Besides having those two setbacks, I am working on another offline promotion right now, and once I work the bugs out I will be hitting up Canada Post to make some deliveries for me and I will be sure to let you all know how it goes.
Has anyone else out there done some offline promotion of their photoblog? Why not sure your experiences with us by leaving a comment below.
2 responses so far ↓
I do direct mail for a living, but I haven’t done it for my blog at all. The best I can say I do for offline promotion is word of mouth. People see me with a huge f’n camera all the time so they assume I take good pictures. Likely they’re wrong, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hand them one of my handy Moo cards.
I pick up clients this way too – all by word of mouth, friends pimping me out (also handing out moo cards) and first-hand whoring to everyone I work with. From there I collect and keep E-mail addresses which is where we come online again.
In a DM campaign for work I’d qualify the people I’d mail to – and if I wanted to sell prints, the first people to ask would be the last one’s to buy. Expanding your sales base, however, is the expensive part, and there are some very widespread (yet expensive) ways to get your product out to the masses.
Anyways, only old people read mail.
If you take the time to visit Chase’s site you’ll also definitely want to check out his blog (follow the Blog link on his website), where you’ll find the most amazing video entry ever from Atlanta-based photographer, Zack Arias. Everyone here should watch this in its entirety at least once, perhaps more if it moves you the way it probably will. Utterly inspiring.